I never would have thought of it...an Iron with a headlight...

A few weeks ago we were up visiting the folks (mine as well as D's Dad) and since my sister's baby was getting blessed in church the next day we stayed the night. Our church clothes had gotten somewhat...mashed along the way so my father-in-law let me use his iron.

First let me say that I am not big on ironing. I avoid it when at all possible, although at one point in life I worked at a dry cleaner and spent a good portion of my day ironing. When they make a shirt press like the one pictured at right for the home then I will be happy to go back to keeping everyone's church shirts wrinkle free. It was a lot of fun pressing shirts with that machine. However, a standard iron just doesn't do it for me.

Maybe its just all in the iron you choose though. Our iron is one that we got for a wedding gift. Its very basic and it has served us well. Its nothing very fancy, but it does the job. The iron at my Father in Law's house however, is more than just your basic iron. For one thing, its a lot heavier than our iron, its all shiny and metal, and it is a SHARK. That in itself says its a tough kind of iron. So I got the ironing board all set up, got the church shirts laid out and ready to go and started to iron. The Shark did a nice job. Lots of steam, and its just so shiny it made me smile. Then I noticed it. There was a little light on the front. Kind of like...a flashlight. I asked my F-I-L "Your iron has a light?" He just said yes. He seemed to think it was perfectly normal. But to me, the ironing challenged one, it was unheard of. I tried to think of a usefulness for the light.

Scenario #1...you live in a studio apartment which you share with someone, and you have to get up and iron early in the morning to get ready for work. You don't want to turn the light on and wake up the roomie, so you can use the Shark to iron in the dark!

From there my scenarios became less...realistic.

#2: You wake up in the middle of the night and hear a noise that sounds like there is an intruder in the house. Quietly you plug your Shark iron (that you conveniently keep next to the bed) in and wait the mere moments it needs to heat up. Knowing that the 12 foot cord is not going to be enough you have plugged it into a 30 foot extension cord that is properly rated to provide adequate power to the Shark. Covering the bright glow of its headlight with one hand (while carefully keeping the edge of your hand away from the hot part of the iron) you creep out of your room making sure to keep plenty of extension cord free. You startle the intruder and are rewarded with a great view of his surprised expression in the headlight of the Shark as you send the iron hurtling towards his face. He will never know what hit him.

#3. You wake up in the uncomfortable hide-a-bed at Grandma's house, hungry for a midnight snack because the three TV dinners she divided between seven people was just somehow not enough for you at dinner. Afraid the light will alert her to your foraging for your own survival in her kitchen, you grab your trusty Shark iron and extension cord and use the handy headlight to make your way into the kitchen...(the TV dinner part of this story is true...if you want to lose weight...go live with my Grandma.)

So I really couldn't think of a use for that headlight, and F-I-L didn't offer me one although he seemed to think it was a perfectly normal thing to have on an iron. In preparation for this blog I looked up some info on the iron (to get a picture) and I found out that it has a "Headlight for easy, shadow free ironing ." I guess that makes sense. Although, I am sure I could come up with a dungeon scenario if you need more reasons to get an iron with a headlight.